Many businesses are now aware of Apps. They hear a lot about them, see various Apps on their own smartphones and tablets, they hear numerous commentators saying that all businesses should have an App to keep their audience engaged. They’re bombarded with messages along the lines of “it’s the latest thing” and “if you haven’t got one, you’ll get left behind”.

And they might have a point. Google have just celebrated their 10 billionth Android App download while the number of downloads from Apple’s AppStore is expected to pass 20 billion within the next couple of months!
Companies are often left bemused as others race to get their App out to the market but, in the same way many businesses ponder the benefits of blogging or twitter, but the answer that often gets left unanswered is “Why?” “Why do I need an App?” and “What will it actually do for my business?”

The answer is simple – if you can’t think of a reason why, then don’t bother until you can.

The whole point of a Business App is to help the user achieve something specific, and to do it QUICKLY using a tool, be it a smartphone or tablet, that they carry with them all the time. That might be to complete a task using the App itself, or it might simply be help them to achieve something else by supplying them with knowledge to help them complete that task at the time they most need it – when they are actually doing it.

While many ‘end-user’ Apps such as games or news updates can be justified as simply engaging the user and keeping your company name in their thoughts, there is another type of App which can bring measurable benefits to your business. This is the Performance Support App. A Performance Support App is one which provides your employees with essential information and guidance to help them carry out their tasks according to your procedures for best practice.

The benefits of these Apps can be immense in so many ways and include:

• Reducing the need for large training budgets
• Improve knowledge retention in support of existing training programmes
• Reduce demand on already stretched helpdesk resources
• Ensure company compliance reducing the possibility of fines
• Improve effectiveness and customer service
• Improve productivity and efficiency
• Increase sales conversion rates and profitability

You can start to see the full scope of the benefits of having an App just by looking at staff training. It is generally accepted that attendees can forget up to 80% of what they learn within two weeks of the training. Add in the cost of travel, accommodation and expenses for multi-day training courses, which can be close to half the total cost of the training, and you have the recipe for a very expensive and ineffective programme indeed when multiplied by a large and diverse workforce, especially if some of those are mobile or working remotely.

Any company with a large in-house training requirement should therefore look at how an App can help by both reducing cost and improving performance.

To start with, instead of a three or four day training course, shorten it to one day with a morning session to communicate the important business messages and an afternoon session of training on how to use the new App. The result is vastly reduced waste of valuable training resources, improved morale due to less waste of employee’s time, less impact on normal business by taking employees away from their normal roles for less time, and improved performance because those trained now have all that information to hand exactly when they need it. They don’t have to remember the new information – they just have to remember how to access it on their App next time they need it.

Hopefully that will give you food for thought when thinking about why you need a Company App. Simply having an App for the sake of it won’t bring you anything other than difficulty justifying the expense. Look first for a business problem that can be solved, a large training or communication expense that might be reduced, or a business objective that an App might help to achieve.

Over the coming months, we’ll add to this series with some more specific examples of exactly how an App could benefit your business. So, next time your company is discussing having its own App, you’ll be able to answer the most important question of all – Exactly what the point of it actually is.